Three Reasons I am Leaving Network Solutions

1. They Can’t Answer My Questions

I tried reaching out for help twice now and have been let down both times. Once on Twitter on July 20th and once to NetSol’s Tech Support phone line (Service Request # 1-410445817). Nobody responded on Twitter and the info I got from the tech support was wrong!

Here is my situation:

I attempted to use my site’s .htaccess file to redirect some “old” pages to new pages (about 15 in total) when launching my site redesign.

The old pages have a .php extension. The new pages are all in WordPress.

I had to fall back to using PHP redirects within the “old” .php files themselves, which is suboptimal for SEO. .htaccess redirects for .html files work fine.

2. Tech Support Gives Out Wrong Information

I called NetSol tech support with the details mentioned above and was told the following via email:

“The only ones which do not work are the ones where the page you are rewriting does not exist. When you use the “Redirect 301″ command, Apache checks to make sure the page is there first before it does the rewrite, so if the page is not there, such as resources.php, you will get a 404 error instead. If you use RewriteRule instead, the original page does not have to exist.”

This is not true! I tried the redirects with .html extensions instead and it worked, even without the “old” .html file in the server directory. They are confusing mod rewrites with redirects. I was given this information several times.

Eventually my requests for explanation were elevated to a very nice lady in the “Executive Office”. She seemed genuinely willing to help, but after several phone calls and emails they still were not able to understand that .html files redirected properly while .php files do not and that that mod rewrites are not the same thing as a redirect.

3. They Make Up Silly Names for Things

I had already made up my mind to switch to DreamHost (site transitions in the works) but then I get this message when I logged back in to NetSol to make some DNS changes:

New Network Solutions Product Names (click to expand)

Seriously? What’s wrong with calling a domain name a “domain name”? And I no longer have a web site, I now have an “nsBusinessSpace”?

It’s bad enough that Network Solutions is selling half-assed fixed price SEO packages to unsuspecting small business owners (another post for another time), but they continue to prove that they don’t get it. Sorry NetSol. Your tech support and Twitter people are nice folks and seem eager to help. The fact that nobody can answer my questions AND you insist on trying to trademark silly names for commodities has brought us to this. Goodbye.

Latest Comment

301 issues here too - Network Solutions completely ignore my emails when I ask about 301 redirects for a Windows Hosting solution. I don't understand why this is an issue as I setup these redirects on my web servers here on my network; however, on Network Solutions site, it states that they do not provide this for Windows Hosting. This, in my option, is a huge problem in terms of SEO and I don't understand how they expect to offer a Windows Hosting service and exclude the #1 configuration needed to ensure that your website it not competing (splitting) its PageRank with itself.

For this reason, I am in the process of moving 14 accounts off of Network Solutions and over to GoDaddy.

WARING for anyone with Search Engine Optimization priorities - do not setup a Windows Hosting package ("nsHosting") with Network Solutions as they can not provide the most important setting for Search Engine Optimization.

Comments

My apologies for not getting to your tweet of July 20th. The team that monitors twitter usually answers all tweets to us and I am not sure what happened here. What you have stated here is definitely a learning experience for us.Is there a chance that we could get a few minutes of your time to call and speak to you along with my friends in the hosting product management team. Feedback always helps us serve our customers better and thank you for taking the time to post this.
Shashi

Shashi, I spoke with 2 different people there over the course of 4 days and both ended up giving me the same answers even after conferring with hosting engineers. The simple answer is that your systems aren’t configured properly to support a simple .htaccess redirect for a .php file. As I mentioned, it works fine for a .html file, so I assume it’s a configuration problem not a capability problem.

I don’t have any more time to devote to the issue. I made the decision to move my “nsBusinessSpace”(tm) to another provider.

Andrew, Shashi – Net Sol does the same thing to .phtml pages.
301 redirects of something like http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/text.phtml?m=20 will end in page not found also.
Crappy service and under-qualified engineers. We had to move 10 projects away from Net Sol this year already.

301 issues here too – Network Solutions completely ignore my emails when I ask about 301 redirects for a Windows Hosting solution. I don’t understand why this is an issue as I setup these redirects on my web servers here on my network; however, on Network Solutions site, it states that they do not provide this for Windows Hosting. This, in my option, is a huge problem in terms of SEO and I don’t understand how they expect to offer a Windows Hosting service and exclude the #1 configuration needed to ensure that your website it not competing (splitting) its PageRank with itself.

For this reason, I am in the process of moving 14 accounts off of Network Solutions and over to GoDaddy.

WARING for anyone with Search Engine Optimization priorities – do not setup a Windows Hosting package (“nsHosting”) with Network Solutions as they can not provide the most important setting for Search Engine Optimization.